Jennifer Aniston couldn’t remember her on-screen soulmate, David Schwimmer, and now she’s drawing a complete blank on “the Rachel” hairdo.
What kind of mind meld has Uber Eats orchestrated here?
In a continuation of the “Worth Remembering” campaign that kicked off during Super Bowl 58, Aniston is back for another round of promoting Uber Eats as a broad-based buyer destination. This time, she’s also hyping her own haircare line, LolaVie, as it makes its debut on the delivery service.
Repeating the premise of the initial spot—which co-starred David and Victoria Beckham, Usher and Jelly Roll—Aniston chats with her stylist, Chris McMillan, about LolaVie being available via Uber Eats.
For him to retain that bit of info, he’ll have to forget something else, she says, noticing a new ‘do he’s giving to a client in his chair.
“OK, now that is a very cute haircut,” Aniston says. “That’s like a little shag—I’ve never seen that before.”
The recipient of the makeover tries to jog Aniston’s memory: “Of course you have—it’s the Rachel.”
“Is that your name?” Aniston wants to know.
The conversation just goes downhill from there, creating more confusion for Aniston and comedy gold for viewers.
Big umbrella
The spot follows another post-Super Bowl ad in which Usher forgets how to roller skate, with Uber Eats mining the evergreen theme from agency Special Group for more content.
“For us, the Super Bowl is so much more than just one night,” said Georgie Jeffreys, head of marketing, North America for Uber. “We are always after a concept big and compelling enough to sustain cross-vertical campaign activity, with individual executions that can stand on their own.”
As an Easter egg, there was a bottle of LolaVie product partially visible in Aniston’s shopping bag during the Super Bowl ad. Building a new spot around her and the brand she launched in 2021—and heading back into beloved Friends territory—was a logical next step, according to Dave Horton, the agency’s executive creative director.
“This campaign plays with our collective memories, watching someone forget something that we all so clearly remember about them,” Horton told ADWEEK. “Playing with Jennifer forgetting one of the most iconic hairstyles of all time was an idea we came to pretty quickly—then it was just a matter of who would actually be getting ‘the Rachel,’ Jennifer or someone else.”
The ad, released early this week on Aniston’s Instagram, was shot in tandem with the Super Bowl spot on the Warner Bros. backlot with director Jake Szymanski.
The work comes as DoorDash and other competitors in the category are promoting goods far beyond the initial food delivery that made them mainstays for American consumers, using the Big Game as a high-profile marketing platform.
Comedy collab
Uber Eats and Special have been working with celebrities for four years, often collaborating with the A-listers on scripts and other details. Aniston was “really involved” in the final product, Horton said.
“Writing something that feels insightful to [talent] and then letting them find their voice in it just gets everyone more invested in what we’re doing and comes across as authentic and more generous to their fans,” Horton said.
LolaVie joins a number of other brands—including Le Labo, Goop, Origins, The Body Shop and Dr. Barbara Sturm—as part of Uber Eats’ beauty offerings.
Aniston has amped up her LolaVie marketing lately, partnering with Benito Skinner to pull a prank on a couple of consumers. As captured in a recent video, the women thought they were getting new hairdos from McMillan but instead got Skinner’s alter ego, Jenni the “TMI hairstylist.”
Follicle trivia: Aniston has said publicly that she was never a personal fan of “the Rachel,” once telling Allure that it was “the ugliest haircut I’ve ever seen.” She didn’t care for its high maintenance, either.
“I’d curse Chris every time I had to blow dry,” she told Marie Claire. “It took three brushes—it was like doing surgery.”
